Pixelation
Critique => Pixel Art => Topic started by: bonofthedead on January 16, 2009, 04:25:18 am
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i had an idea for something, so i attempted to draw the character i was thinking. i need some help with first lowering the colors again, and making a platform standing version of this picture, only 24x32.
(http://i233.photobucket.com/albums/ee154/BonOfTheDead/girl.png)
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(http://i39.tinypic.com/2pragyb.png)
Just an edit, you seem to have AA'd most everything.
Gotta use all your colors to your advantage.
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looks a lot better then mine. i have to get the hang of colors.
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OK, little edit here.
(http://www.ptoing.net/edit/redgirl.png)
Here is what I did / points to note:
Good:
- Nice, quirky character
- You seem to have at least an OK drawing ability from what I can judge looking at this piece
Bad:
- You have too many colours and the colours you are having are too close/have too little contrast
- Due to that The aa you have does not really work
- Some of the lighting does not really make sense (light cheeks?)
Fixes:
- I reduced your 19 colours to 16. For this I first upped the contrast on all the colour, make darks darker, lights lighter, then look which colours can be combined and reused. You can see I did not add extra colours for where the yellow zigzag goes darker. This is one of the key things in pixelart. It is very easy to efficiently reuse colours and this gives you more control in the end.
- After that I was down to 12 colours, so I had slots to add the pink for the cheeks and the yellow for the design on the poncho thing.
- I removed many of the internal lines, they are not really needed, unless you go for a really lowcolour style without shading for example.
- Always think about where you lightsource is and follow through with that. It does not have to make 100% sense but it should not look obviously off. Sometimes you can cheat a bit to pronounce things.
- With the lighting you can also have coloured outlines which correspond to where the light is coming from rather than solid black
- I applied proper aa. Always remember that antialias is an approximation (like pretty much everything in pixelart, in small things every pixel counts)
Have a look at this image and I think you will see what I mean.
(http://www.wayofthepixel.net/pixelation/upload/features/03_mirre/aaapprox.png)
That's it for now. If you have any questions concerning what I wrote, feel free to ask :)
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man, youre good. im still trying to get the hang of pixel art. i though i was getting a bit closer at least.
maybe someone could help me. im trying to make that character to a very small size. ive tried, but it doesnt look good.
(http://i233.photobucket.com/albums/ee154/BonOfTheDead/tinygirl.png)
thats pretty much how i want it, but i cant get it to look right. i tried coloring it, but stopped when it didnt look right.
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I applied proper aa. Always remember that antialias is an approximation (like pretty much everything in pixelart, in small things every pixel counts)
Have a look at this image and I think you will see what I mean.
(http://www.wayofthepixel.net/pixelation/upload/features/03_mirre/aaapprox.png)[/li][/list]
Not to derail the topic, but I wanted to ask you about this. Is that what you consider proper AA, in your example? Whenever I do that type of AA I end up feeling like it's wrong because visually, it looks broken. The lighter pixels that do the buffering makes the line look like it has a gap in it, or such. On the otherhand, I can't seem to AA lines without resorting to something like this. I get very confused.
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Dusty: the issue arrives though that you are actually trying to AA a line. A single-pixel line, by design, creates banding. The only way to fight banding is to de-emphasize the steps. Therefore you come across the problem that is specific to single pixel lines only (as aaing a surface doesn't have to deal with): line thickness. How fat is the line you want to convey? If it's too fat, there'll be banding. If it's too think, the line will appear broken. A lot of pixel artists tend to deal with this on a case-by-case basic, and quite reflexively. No one method is completely correct, in my opinion.
(http://www.locustleaves.com/aalines.png)
Perhaps this chart is useful.
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Dusty: the issue arrives though that you are actually trying to AA a line. A single-pixel line, by design, creates banding. The only way to fight banding is to de-emphasize the steps. Therefore you come across the problem that is specific to single pixel lines only (as aaing a surface doesn't have to deal with): line thickness. How fat is the line you want to convey? If it's too fat, there'll be banding. If it's too think, the line will appear broken. A lot of pixel artists tend to deal with this on a case-by-case basic, and quite reflexively. No one method is completely correct, in my opinion.
(http://www.locustleaves.com/aalines.png)
Perhaps this chart is useful.
Definitely helpful. I was generally looking at the best way to AA a single line, like an outline(as that's where I usually have the problem). If I don't break the line with AA, it looks too thick, or blurry. But if I do, it looks broken. That is extremely helpful though, thanks.